Newcastle Game Plan To Offset Stoke Aerial Attack

Written by Dr. Ed Harrison

10:32am Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Commented 3 times

It will be a tough game at Stoke City on Saturday, as Newcastle will have to expect an aerial bombardment from Stoke City.

Leon Best – it’s important we play our own game Since Stoke are a couple of points below Newcastle in the Premier league table, it will be important for Newcastle not to lose the game, and we’d be happy with a point.

But Stoke seem to have found some form of late, and are coming off a good 2-1 win in the FA Cup against West Ham, which puts them in the semifinals against Bolton.

In-form striker Leon Best has told the Newcastle official site today, that it’s important for Newcastle to play their own game on Saturday, and this is what the Irish International striker said:

“It will be very difficult. It’s a tough place to go, as you’ve seen because even the top teams struggle there,”

“They’ve got their game plan perfect to suit them, and we’ve just got to stick to our game plan and hopefully come off better.”

“When you get down and play against them then you’ve got a good chance. You can’t afford to give them set pieces, throw-ins and things like that, and that’s what we will aim to do.”

“We want to play football, keep it on the field rather than giving away fouls, throw-ins and corners.” “I’m going into every game now full of confidence,”

“I’ve watched a few of my recent games back and I can see I’m getting a lot of chances. I just need to keep scoring in as few chances as I can.”

Leon has it exactly right, he just needs to keep putting the ball into the net, and other things will take care of themselves.

Obviously what Best is saying is just some of the Newcastle game for Saturday, but it’s difficult not to get sucked into the Stoke way of playing the game, especially at the Britannia Stadium.

What we need is a disciplined and good performance from Newcastle, and after all, Stoke are hardly one of the best sides in the league.

If the lads can play somewhere near their best form, we’ll have a more than decent chance of getting something out of the game, and that’s what we are hoping for.

In 11 appearances, including 10 starts, Leon has 6 goals for Newcastle, and that’s an excellent record, and we just hope he can maintain that goal-scoring form through the end of the season.

Carroll would have been a perfect foil for Stoke. He was great on defensive headers to cover for Colo’s relative weakness in the air. Move Colo to left back for this game and go with Sol in the middle to help Williamson. Sol is fairly immobile now but it is the best we can do until Jose is back. Use Saylor at right back and maybe push Simpson to right wing, or use Fergie on left wing and move Jonas to right wing. Jonas is not strong enough to play at left back.

League Placement

health update

I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in February 2017 and completed four months of chemotherapy in late July and will continue to have hormone treatment.

The cancer spread in the bones but it has been stabilized and has not spread further.

I am still recovering from some of the side effects of the chemo treatment - it's mainly severe fatigue and exhaustion.

Stage 4 cancer is not curable so I will continue to have cat scans and bone scans every four months to ensure the cancer is not spreading.

It is as it is - these things happen - and I will do my very best under the circumstances.

Ed Harrison

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